After he had been transferred to Yugoslavia, he felt constrained to prepare a report on his accomplishments in Poland which would end any doubt as to his thoroughness and versatility. The report consists of a letter to Himmler with several appendices, each dealing with different phases of the Action Reinhardt. From the letter, it is plain that the chief purpose of all this documentation was to show Himmler that Globicnick was a shrewd business man as well as a capable executioner.
According to this report, the Action Reinhardt was as subtly conceived and carried out as any plan which contemplated the extermination of a substantial part of the population of Europe could be. It progressed by easy stages.
THE PRESIDENT: I am afraid I will have to interrupt you. The sound track has to be changed. We will take a recess at this time.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess for 15 minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
First, the Jews were uprooted from their homes and transported to ghettos. At this stage of the game all of their real property and movables which could not be carried with them were confiscated. This included, of course, all industrial plants and all the physical assets of businesses in the East which were owned by the Jews. When they had been rounded up, herded into the ghettos and furnished with special identity cards and insignia to be sewn on their clothes so that they were easy to recognize, they were then left alone for a while until the SS could organize the utilization of the confiscated business property and prepare the next resting place for the Jews.
When this period had elapsed, they were "resettled" a second time by being shipped from the ghettos to the concentration camps, where the first thing that happened was that they were stripped of the remaining property which they had, such as currency, watches, jewelry, fountain pens, and the like. Then, in due course, they were asphyxiated in the gas chambers and incinerated, after all the bridges, gold teeth, and fillings were removed from their mouths. It is a boast of the great American packing companies, such as Swift and Armour, that when a pig goes through one of their slaughter houses nothing is wasted except the squeal. These defendants can without any immodesty make the same claim. The commandant of the concentration camp at Auschwitz estimated that during his tenure of office over 2,500,000 persons were so processed under his personal direction. Auschwitz, of course, was only one of several extermination camps in the East. It is estimated that about 8 or 10 million people were eventually reduced to ashes in these crematoria.
We have described the general pattern of the Action Reinhardt. We do not mean to imply that these successive transportations took place with assembly line precision. In the first place, it would have been wasteful to have destroyed this potential labor supply too soon. While they were in the ghettos, and even while they were in the concentration camps, they were used as slave labor by the SS to man the industries which it had confiscated.
Jews with special skills were deliberately cut out from the herd and temporarily preserved. Further, it was impracticable in the nature of things to accomplish all of this overnight. After all, the crematoria had a limited capacity and could only be operated 24 hours a day. It would have been unhygienic to asphyxiate Jew and Poles faster than the corpse disposal facilities could accommodate them. It was tried in several cases and proved to be untidy.
In the opening statement, the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto was described in some detail. This was a notable chapter in the narrative of the Reinhardt Action for several reasons. In the first place, the Warsaw ghetto was one of the largest in Poland and the extinction of all the persons who lived there was a noteworthy stride toward the goal of the whole action. In the second place, it was particularly dramatic because the Jews there had the audacity to try to defend themselves, and, when that proved to be futile, had the further impudence to try to hide in the cellars and sewers to keep from being sent to the extermination camps. The whole incident, therefore, furnished some diverting excitement for the SS and army personnel who were detailed to clean out the ghetto and the scene was made more colorful by the methods they employed, such as setting the houses in the area on fire and throwing smoke bombs down the manholes that led into the sewers. It made dramatic copy for the German newspapers and it furnished good material for a long memorandum to Himmler by the persons in charge, The SS had a photographic team on hand to immortalize the whole operation on celluloid, and a number of these pictures have been introduced in evidence here. They are in Prosecution Document Book XX, pages 56 to 109.
But the demolition of the Warsaw ghetto, carried out by Amtsgruppe C after the Jews had actually been exterminated, was no more than an incident in the execution of the Action Reinhardt and if we think of it as more than that, we lose our perspective and sense of proportion in judging the extent of the Reinhardt Action. To consider the Reinhardt Action as synonymous and coextensive with the Warsaw Ghetto Action is analogous to using the names Guadalcanal and World War II interchangeably.
In both cases, the latter was merely a bloody episode which took place in the course of the former.
August Frank said that he always considered the Reinhardt Action as a move to "utilize the property of the Jews". This indeed was one of its principal objectives, although, of course, it had the further purpose of achieving a "final solution of the Jewish problem"; this is, of wiping out the Jews in Europe completely. The aim was double-barreled and the two objectives were inseparable. The defendants here, however, all fall back on the plea that although they may have known about the confiscation phase, they never dreamed of the existence of the extermination phase out of which the former grew. This is as far-fetched and implausible as most of their other defenses, especially in view of the fact that in document after document spectacles and dental gold are specifically alluded to as constituting part of the confiscated treasure.
While the seizure of this wealth was in progress, the WVHA had the responsibility of deciding how it was to be used to the best advantage. The proclamation of this decision was made through the issuance of August Frank's notorious distribution order of September 1942 to the chiefs of the SS administrative camps at Lublin and Auschwitz, where the personal property had been collected. This directive, part of which we have already read, gave complete details for sorting, classifying and shipping all this property to its proper destination.
The jewelry, precious metals, gold teeth, and currency would be taken to the Reichsbank by Melmer, who was in charge of the treasury under Hans Loerner in A-II. The fountain pens, flashlights, alarm clocks, and damaged watches were to be sent to the shops at Oranienburg to be repaired by Office D-II, which was under the defendant Sommer. An inventory of the furs and hides was to be sent to Georg Loerner's Office B-II, and the articles themselves were to be sent to the clothing plant of the Waffen-SS at Ravensbrueck. Office D-III was concerned with the obtaining of the dental gold.
Dentists in the concentration camps who were all subordinates of the defendant Pook actually supervised the extractions from the corpses and submitted periodic reports of the dentures obtained in this way to Office D-III. Pook's underlings were also charged with scraping, cleaning, and sterilizing the teeth before they were eventually sent to the Reichsbank; typhus and tuberculosis bacteria were omitted from the distribution list. Kammler, chief of Amtsgruppe C, was in charge of the demolition of the Warsaw ghetto and the defendant Kiefer was his deputy at the time this work was carried out.
Such was the disposition of the personal property which was seized in the course of the Reinhardt Action. But the problem of the utilization of the machinery, industrial plants, and real estate was delegated to Amtsgruppe W. It was decided to organize a corporation called OSTI, a subsidiary of DWB which was supervised by Staff W.
The purpose of OSTI was to combine the industrial potential seized in the course of the Reinhardt Action with the vast labor pool of concentration camp inmates so as to make the most economical use of both. Industrial machinery was moved from its former locations and centralized in huge factories either within the concentration camps and labor camps or conveniently near them. The maximum production was expected as a result of this concentration of plant and labor supply.
OSTI was eventually dissolved in 1944. From the very beginning, the ranks of its workers had been decimated by the pestilences which swept unchecked through the camps, as well as by starvation, exposure, impossible working conditions, and the brutality of the guards. This slowed down its operations. But the real reason for the dissolution came later.
Now we have just said that the SS always regarded the stay of the Jews and Poles in the concentration camps and labor camps as a temporary one. It was always understood by the SS that so far as these people were concerned heaven was their destination and their departure was to be postponed only long enough for the facilities of the murder centers at Auschwitz, Lublin, and Treblinka to be expanded.
By a grim irony, these wretches who had been marked for extermination were made to produce the engines which were later used to kill them. Exhibit 660 in Document Book XXVII is a letter from the construction chief at Auschwitz, Bischoff, an official of Amtsgruppe C. The letter is addressed to the DAW, one of the W industries, and reads in part as follows:
"You are informed with reference to the above mentioned letter that three gas-tight chambers are to be completed in accordance with the order of 18 January 1943. They are to be exactly similar in measurements and type to the chambers previously supplied.
"On this occasion we would remind you of a further order of 6 March 1943 concerning supply of a gas door 100/192 for corpse cellar I of Crematorium III, BW 30a, which is to be manufactured exactly according to type and measurement of the cellar door of the opposite crematorium II with a peep-hole of double 8 mm. glass with rubber packing and steel frame. This order is to be treated as especially urgent."
Apparently the order was filled in time. By autumn of 1943 it was felt that the gas chambers and crematoria had reached a state of perfection sufficient to complete the solution of the "problem" caused by the existence of these inmates who were being used during the interim as slave labor in the various factories of OSTI. On November 3, 1943, as the documents show, all the Jewish workers who had been employed by OSTI were liquidated and put in the stoves. This withdrawal of most of its labor force wrecked OSTI's productive capacity, and after several abortive attempts to continue it as a going concern, Pohl finally gave it up as a bad job and concluded to dissolve it.
Such, in a nutshell, was the role of OSTI in the Reinhardt Action. We will mention only one other phase of it before we pass on to a discussion of the activities of the individual defendants. We have described how, according to Frank's directive, the cash, jewelry, and precious metals acquired in the course of the Reinhardt Action were to be taken to the Reichsbank. There the German currency was deposited in "Account 1288", commonly called the Reinhardt Account. The jewelry, trinkets, and teeth were assorted into two classes. The articles that were considered valuable only for the precious metals they contained were melted down and the ones that were thought to be more valuable if sold in their original form were sent from the Reichsbank to the municipal pawn shop and there disposed of.
Eventually, therefore, all of this wealth was reduced to a credit entry in the Reinhardt Account.
The question then arose how to dispose of this money to the best advantage and this again was a decision which was the responsibility of the WVHA. The financial affairs of some of the W industries were considerably entangled. Some of them owed money to creditors such as the German Red Cross and the SS Savings Association, which was under the control of the defendant Hans Loerner in Amt A-I. It was decided to pay off all such claims to third party creditors. At about this same time, Pohl wanted to expand the armament industries which were owned and operated by the DWB, and the officials of OSTI were also clamoring for a loan. It was decided to take care of all these matters by transferring 30 million marks to the DWB, which would then pay off the third party creditors and make the loans to expand the armament industries and to capitalize OSTI.
These matters were discussed and settled in June 1943, and eventually the whole transaction was reduced to a contract between Frank, acting as representative for the German Reich (which technically was the owner of the Reinhardt Fund) and Pohl, acting as representative of the DWB.
Thus, it can be seen that the WVHA was not only the agency which supervised and directed the collection of property confiscated in the course of the Reinhardt Action, but it was also the agency which controlled the spending of the money into which this wealth was converted; and it can also be seen that the W industries, which were part of the WVHA, were approved as borrowers. The WVHA, then, had a triple function in the carrying out of the Reinhardt Action: it acted as a collection agency, as administrator, and as beneficiary. One would have to strain his imagination to think of a closer possible connection.
We will now take up the tasks of the individual Aemter within the WVHA and the activities of these defendants in accomplishing those tasks.
The concentration camps were under the immediate supervision of Amtsgruppe D, and it was through this part of the WVHA that every minute, every detail, of the life of the inmate was rigidly regulated. Amt D-IV had an administrative official in every concentration camp. Amt D-II had a labor allocation officer in every concentration camp. Camp security and inmate affairs were regulated on the spot by D-I and D-III had responsibility for their medical and dental treatment, such as it was.
The organization of this Amtsgruppe and its place in the WVHA explodes the defense that the RSHA, which had "legal" jurisdiction over arrests, releases, and punitive executions, is primarily responsible for what went on in the concentration camp. Only the WVHA had officers in the camp who were to look after food, clothing, billets, medical and dental care, labor commitments, and camp security. No other Main Office had the necessary support in the way of construction, supplies, finances, and means of using labor that the WVHA had from its Amtsgruppen C, B, A, and W.
The defendant Sommer was chief of the Main Department in charge of labor allocation in Amt D-II and deputy chief of the Amt. After the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps became a part of the WVHA, D-II was the most important office in the concentration camp system. Sommer's orders transferring inmates to the construction projects of Amtsgruppe C, to the SS industries and to armament projects were tantamount to death orders for thousands. He was the labor allocation expert, and his talents were the bearings on which the vast organization revolved. Large transports of inmates from one camp to another were handled by Amt D-II, and the record is full of descriptions of the deaths and mistreatments which occurred during these hauls. Sommer must have known of the way his function as labor allocation expert fitted in with the initial separation of the inmates, when the transports arrived at the camp, into those who could and those who could not work.
The Tribunal will recall the witnesses who described how those who could be allocated for work were driven to the right, those who could not work to the left. The way sinister led to the gas chamber. The same is true of the transports from the work camps and smaller concentration camps to the nearest gas chamber of invalids who were unfit to work.
Sommer could not have been oblivious to the constant revisions of the total number of inmates available for labor. When his lists showed a decrease, he is bound to have known that these people had disappeared somehow, and that it was unlikely that they were on vacation.
Sommer was involved when inmates were marked for death in the punitive details at the stone quarries. He signed the orders sending them there, and a few days later his representatives in the camp were notified of the death of those inmates. Sommer's part in the Action Reinhardt in receiving and repairing the watches and clocks has been mentioned. He could not have been ignorant of their source. The boxes he received were clearly marked "Action Reinhardt", and if others down the line were deceived as to the origin of this loot, then it was because all identifying marks had been removed in the repair shops at Oranienburg.
The participation by Pook, the Chief Dentist in D-III, in Action Reinhardt has also been referred to. It was the task of his subordinates in the concentration camp to supervise the extraction of dental gold from the cadavers after they had been removed from the gas chambers. Pook was the superior of scores of camp dentists following this procedure in every concentration camp. His men received the gold whether the inmate had been gassed, beaten to death, or shot, and whether or not in the course of the Reinhardt Action. Pook knew that these inmates had not died natural deaths. No one was in a better position to find out. He worked in Lolling's small but powerful office as Lolling's immediate subordinate; his office, like Sommer's, was within a stone's throw of the notorious concentration camp Sachsenhausen; he made innumerable duty trips to the various concentration camps. He ordered that anaesthetics be dispensed with, and told one of the camp dentists that too much consideration was being shown in the treatment of inmates.
In our consideration of the tasks of Amtsgruppe D we must not forget a rather special group of crimes committed in the concentration camps, the medical experiments on involuntary human guinea pigs. Thousands were murdered and tortured by freezings, poisonings, infections, and sterilizations. These acts were perhaps the most spectacular of all the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. The judgments of the International Military Tribunal and of Military Tribunal No. 1 in the recently concluded case against Karl Brandt et al have established their criminality beyond all doubt.
While there is credible evidence in the record that a number of the defendants were connected with criminal medical experiments, the prosecution is content - in order to simplify the issues - to limit this aspect of the case, so far as personal participation is concerned, to the defendant Pohl. This man, as chief of the WVHA, was a necessary party to these crimes. Concentration camp inmates were the unwilling victims of the experiments. They could be made available only through Pohl and Amtsgruppe D. On 4 December 1942, Maurer, chief of Amt D-II, directed that prisoners assigned for experimental purposes should be listed as such on the daily roster, and that directors of employment should be informed accordingly. In a letter of May 1943, Pohl considered the appointment of a doctor to supervise all experiments in concentration camps, so as to relieve Amt D-II's Lolling of that responsibility. He stated that eight to ten series of experiments were going on at that time. After May 1944, the consent of Pohl's subordinate Gluecks had to be secured before any experiment could be performed on inmates.
Although he was not a doctor himself, Pohl had a detailed knowledge of most of the experiments and he took a personal interest in several. In his own affidavit, he admitted knowing of the malaria, high altitude, freezing, blood coagulation, gas, and sterilization experiments. He was also candid enough, before the trial began, to concede that the experimental subjects were not volunteers and that non-German nationals were frequently used. Pohl witnesses some of the high altitude experiments in company with Himmler. Pohl encouraged efforts to develop a cheap and effective method of mass sterilization, the sole purpose of which was to destroy the Jews while temporarily preserving those capable of work.
The Polish Jew Balitzki, who testified before this Tribunal, is one of the few survivors of the horrible X-ray sterilization experiments in Auschwitz. At the same time, Klauberg was performing sterilization experiments in Auschwitz on women. Pohl stated self-righteously that he "declined Klauberg's invitation to see his experiments".
Pohl initiated the food experiments in Mauthausen, which resulted in the death of a substantial number of inmates. He personally approved of the allocation of no less than 400 inmates for the murderous typhus experiments by Haagen in Natzweiler.
Were there no other proof in the record, the evidence on the criminal medical experiments would require the condemnation of Pohl. No sentence, however severe, can atone for these crimes.
MR. FULKERSON: If the Tribunal please, Mr. Higgins will continue the delivery of the prosecution's closing statement.
MR. HIGGINS: We now turn to the defendants in Amtsgruppe W. No group of men in Germany is more directly responsible for the working to death of thousands of concentration camp inmates.
The SS industries originated as concentration camp enterprises in Dachau and Oranienburg and never became anything else. They were in many instances the heart and center of the camp. The DAW Plants grew out of the workshops in the camps and the locations of many camps were chosen because of their proximity to the stone quarries operated by DEST. Time and time again the record here has confirmed the accuracy of the statement contained in the lecture material sent to Fanslau that the purpose of the SS industries was "to get hold of all anti-social elements, which no longer had a right to live within the National Socialist State, and to turn their working strength to the benefit of the whole nation.
This was effected in the concentration camps. The Reich Fuehrer SS, therefore, delegated SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl to set up concentration camp enterprises. In addition, he gave orders to establish companies on a private economy basis for the purpose of employing the prisoners.
"National Socialism maintains this point of view: The State gives orders to the economy. The State does not exist for the benefit of economy, but economy exists for the benefit of the State."
"National Socialism maintains this point of view: The State gives orders to the economy. The State does not exist for the benefit of economy, but economy exists for the benefit of the State."
Another memorandum written by an office chief of the SS industries states that "the tasks were set by the Reichsfuehrer-SS in his capacity as Reichsleiter of the NSDAP.
This applies in particular to the enterprises founded by the authority of the Reichsfuehrer-SS. These receive allocations of concentration camp prisoners as workers in order to be able to master the economic tasks of the Four Year Plan.
"The large-scale use of the labor of concentration camp prisoners by the ReichsfuehrerSS is therefore a measure of the NSDAP, as the "Dynamic element" in the state."
The treatment which the inmates received while they worked in the W-industries indicates that these defendants used human fuel for the National Socialist dynamo.
Under W-I and the defendant Mummenthey were the lethal stone quarries of the SS. The Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Gross-Rosen, and Natzweiler quarries were all taken over by DEST before or at the same time concentration camps were established there. The same is true with respect to the brick works at Neuengamme and Stutthof Concentration Camps.
These devilish enterprises multiplied like toxis mushrooms. By May 1941, DEST had brick works at Oranienburg, Neuengamme, and Berlstedt, granite works at Mauthausen, Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, and Natzweiler, and a stone processing plant at Oranienburg. Additional plants of DEST were the gravel works at Auschwitz and Treblinka, a granite quarry at Blizyn, a klinker ivories at Linz, near Mauthausen, debris-utilization plants in Essen, Duesseldorf, and Hamburg, the stone quarries of Boneschau near Prague, and the Southern Styrian Granite Works at Marburg. Except for the last two named plants all of these industries used concentration camp labor.
At least fifteen thousand inmates were working at one time in the plants subordinated to Amt W-I, and the turnover was rapid.
DEST also produced armaments with inmate labor during the war.
At Flossenburg, Messerschmitt supplied the raw material and machines and DEST furnished the inmates, work locations, and some of its equipment. Munitions were also produced by DEST at Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and Gross-Rosen. These armament projects, like the stone quarries and brick plants, were controlled and supervised by the defendant Mummenthey and Amt-I.
The way of a transgressor of the strict regulations led straight to one of the punitive companies of DEST, where life expectancy was particularly short. Twenty to thirty of the two hundred inmates assigned to the punitive detachment perished each day at Mauthausen. The record drones in monotonous repetition of inmates shot, inmates hanged, inmates starved, worked to death, beaten and scourged.
We have already described extensive operations of the WVHA in the eastern occupied territories. One of the most important of these WVHA operations was carried on by the defendant Bobermin, Chief of Amt II. This office played a large and essential part in the exploitation of Poland. It operated the brick works which had been seized from the Jews there. More than 400 such plants were under Bobermin. These plants were taken from Jews and Poles, most of whom, according to Bobermin, had fled. The reason for their fleeing -- those who were fortunate enough to live to flee -- was of course to escape the Sonderkommandos and Einsatzgruppen. A report made by the defendant Volk, which shows intimate knowledge of the operation of the Eastern plants, casually remarks that a large part of the workers had died during the war, had escaped, were prisoners of war, or were sent to the Reich to work.
The whole world knew that thousands of dispossessed Jews and Poles were being methodically wiped out by the SS and SD, but SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Bobermin, ensconced in his office at Posen and devoting his entire time to the management of over four hundred plants whose labor supply came mainly from the Ghettoes, never heard a word of all this until after the war.
The revelation must have been a shock to his whole nervous system.
He had 80 plants in the Litzmannstadt area, and the record tells of the murder of thousands in the Ghetto there, but Bobermin heard nothing. Truly, he must be one of the most disillusioned men in all of Germany.
The International Military Tribunal found that one-third of the population of Poland was killed in the course of the German occupation but Bobermin testified that he did not hear of a single instance in which a Pole was mistreated. In the acquisition of the property of these Jews, Bobermin insists on a distinction between seizure and confiscation. Seizure, he says, means that the property will be returned to the owners some day. A kind of corporate trustee to take over Jewish property was in fact set up. But most of the Jews were killed before the trustee organization East took possession and no one seriously expected Goering and Himmler ever to seek out their collateral heirs.
Here we find another instance of the WVHA organizing, and utilizing the stolen property of murdered people. When Bobermin came into Poland, he was not technically attached to the Einsatzgruppen. But his function was to thresh what they had harvested. The prosecution charges that he either knew of the source of this property, or that he deliberately closed his eyes to what was taking place.
Inmates and guards from the nearby camp were used in the great cement works near Auschwitz, another project of Bobermin's. He visited the plant several times. He knew that when inmates were no longer able to work, they were sent back to Auschwitz but he had no idea, he claims, that they were to be exterminated. We were not able to find an inmate from the survivors of Auschwitz who had worked in Bobermin's cement factory. Considering the legions who went up the chimney at this infamous camp, this is not surprising. But the evidence has shown that the treatment of slave labor was uniform, and that when an inmate who was too weak to work was sent to Auschwitz, he was only furnished, with a one-way ticket.
The defendant Klein was office chief of W-VIII, the office for socalled special tasks which was in charge of the reconstruction of Wewelsburg. The concentration camp Niederhagen was established for the purpose of supplying inmate labor for this project and hundreds of inmates died from over work, starvation and cruelties of the guards and foremen. Klein's periodic situation reports to Pohl are part of the record and show that Klein considered the Wewelsburg enterprises as his most important task and that he was fully informed about every phase of it, including the allocation of inmate labor. The documents show his dissatisfaction with the number of inmates available for the construction, and his attempts to increase the number of inmates in the camp at Wewelsburg. They also show his negotiations to obtain construction material, and together with the defendant Frank, additional funds for the project. He reported to Pohl on the exact number of inmates used and state of the work in progress. These reports were also distributed in Staff W. In five months 1,200 inmates died, out of a total of 1,200 in the Wewelsburg camp. The deceased inmates came from ten different countries. A resident of the near-by village testified that the high death-rate and mistreatment of the inmates was public knowledge, even though the inhabitants tried to notice as little as possible.
The Kranichfeld building project, which used inmate labor, was also under W-VIII and its status was included in Klein's reports. In February 1944 Baier, Chief of Staff W, wrote to Klein that he had discussed allocation of prisoners for Klein's office with Maurer and that for the time additional inmates from Buchenwald could not be supplied for one of Klein's projects.
Klein was also involved in several confiscations of foreign property. Although his office was interested in only part of the Lobkowicz property, Klein investigated the entire estate. His letters state that he had negotiated with the Regional Gestapo Headquarters and with the RSHA in the confiscation proceedings.
He recommended confiscation of the entire property. He wrote to the defendant Hohberg that "The transactions in the Lobkowicz matter are to be carried out by this office." Hohberg a short time later advised Klein that "the confiscation decree is ready to be sent out." The property was seized by the Regional Gestapo Headquarters and fell into the grasping tentacles of the Reich. Klein was also for a time Procurist of the Nordland Publishing Co., under Amt-W-7 which will be mentioned presently.
Klein has produced affidavits to show that he was only in charge of obtaining funds for the enterprises under his office, W-VIII. Even if this ridiculous contention were true, Klein's connection with these daccities and murders would be sufficient to establish his guilt, but the documents show that his activities went further.
The defense, that his position as office chief actually carried with it no power over the enterprises in his office, is a common place now. Mummenthey claims that his title was only a fiction, and Bobermin testified that he received his only because it simplified the seating arrangement at banquets. Amtsgruppe W documents show, however, that Office Chiefs were considered as Pohl's deputies in their sphere of office, and that the Fuehrer principle strictly applied. It is not to be forgotten that this principle works both ways - it not only pushes the supreme authority up, but it holds the immediate subordinate strictly accountable for everything happening within the scope of his authority.
In addition to the economic enterprises which have already been described, Amtsgruppe W had its own printing firm to disseminate the Nazi gospel. Here is how this purpose was described in the lecture material which was prepared in the legal office of Staff W and approved by Fanslau:
"The circle of the economic enterprises of the SS would not be completed, if it did not also have a great publishing office, to introduce the ideological views of the SS to its SS members and further to additional circles of the population.
The Nordland publishing office G.m.b.H. had developed a great deal during the last year, and now belongs to the main publishing firms, and already today occupies the fifth place among the main publishing firms of the Greater German Reich. Besides this Nordland publishing firm, we have the Voelkicchen Kunstverlag, which in the main produces pictures, e.g., photographs of the Fuehrer, the Reichsfuehrer SS and other important personalities from Party and State. In addition, it produces reproductions of oil paintings."
In addition, Nordland produced, it might be added, such booklets as "The Subhuman", in evidence here, which promoted the idea that Jews and Russians are members of a degenerate species unfit to be regarded as human beings.
Integration and coordination of the many extensive tasks of Amts-gruppe W was complete. Hohberg, Chief of Staff W, drafted and Pohl signed a letter which explains this unity:
"The liaison between parent corporation and subsidiaries is so close that as regards economy one cannot speak of independent enterprises but in some way of branch departments of the parent corporation *** To the person not concerned it might appear as if all these enterprises were not connected with one another. However, that is not the case."
Such close harmony between so many enterprises could only be accomplished by men of considerable genius and influence. These men constituted Staff W. Pohl instructed all of the Amt Chiefs of Antsgruppe W "to cooperate very closely with the Staff" and that there should be "regular cooperation".
Staff W was in fact Pohl's right hand in his managerial functions. Pohl's Business Order provided that Office Chiefs were to report to him after consultation with and in the presence of Chief W, and that constant liaison was to be maintained.
Pohl was of course the supreme authority, but he was not able to direct everything by himself, and to that extent Staff W supervised the SS industries from the top level. Thus, in Baier's affidavit, he says that as Chief of Staff W he supervised the directors of the DWB in financial matters and asked questions concerning plant management, and that Hohberg had preceded him in that capacity. This is corroborated by Pohl's pre-trial statement that "he (Baier) was in charge of the holding companies udder me"; and again, on the stand, that "Staff W was the instrument which I used as the sole business manager of the DWB when I supervised the economic enterprises."
The defendants in Staff W tried to disassociate themselves from the Business Order of November 1944 which emphasized their importance by saying that the order came so late that it never was put into effect. But a witness called by the defense as an expert on Staff W testified that "actually this order only confirmed the conditions which already existed in the WVHA". He also told how Baier made efforts to have his authority within Amtsgruppe W increased. When Pohl issued an order which somewhat reduced his power, "Baier was very much bothered *** he was shocked". Baler complained that he would be of no importance in the Amtsgruppe if this order were carried out, and made proposals to Pohl which were adopted and incorporated into the Basic Order of Business. The same witness testified that Hohberg, who had preceded Baier as Chief of Staff W, exercised more influence than Baier did, and that Hohberg was the economic brains of Amtsgruppe W.
Hohberg, realizing the importance of the position of Staff W, claims that he was only an auditor there and never its chief. But the documents prove the contrary. They show that he signed on many occasions as Chief of Staff, and was referred to by others in the Office as the Chief of Staff. The reason he avoided flaunting his title too flagrantly before outsiders was that he was afraid that the Institute of Auditors and the Reich Minister of Economics would object to his taking an official position with the WVHA.